By Claire Whitcomb
SEATTLE — The Justice Department on Monday asked Washington state to set aside ballots cast by about 400 registered voters it says are not U.S. citizens. Federal prosecutors called the list “only the tip of the iceberg.” Secretary of State Steve Hobbs called the request a pre-election attempt to cast doubt on the results.
Acting U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd of the Western District of Washington and Pete Serrano, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District, sent Mr. Hobbs a letter asking the state to take immediate action to sequester ballots from the voters their investigation identified, KOMO News reported. NBC News, which saw the letter, reported that the department gave the state 24 hours to check the list against citizenship records.
Washington votes entirely by mail, and the general election is Nov. 3.
The federal case
“We have identified over 400 non-citizens who are registered to vote and have voted in multiple elections,” Mr. Floyd said in a news release, according to NBC News. “This is only the tip of the iceberg. We will continue to investigate and identify those who are committing crimes by voting illegally.”
At a news conference, Mr. Floyd said the people flagged had voted about 1,500 times in total, The Seattle Times reported. He was joined by Mr. Serrano and April Miller, acting special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Seattle.
“With the highest level of confidence I have, these are people that are registered to vote, have voted, and are not citizens,” Mr. Floyd said, according to KOMO.
He said investigators compared publicly available voter registration data with Department of Homeland Security records because the state has not given the federal government its full voter file, KIRO 7 reported. KOMO reported that federal agents have also questioned noncitizen detainees and people crossing the border into Washington about whether they have voted.
“We are having to do this essentially one person at a time,” Mr. Floyd said. “With the small sample we have collected so far, I am confident that we are looking at thousands of noncitizens who have been voting in Washington.”
“We may never know the full extent of illegal voting in this state without access to the full database,” he said, according to KIRO.
Mr. Floyd said it was too early to say whether anyone would be charged. He warned that “anyone who assists someone in voting illegally would also be guilty of that crime under the aiding and abetting theory,” The Seattle Times reported. He said some people his agents interviewed believed they were eligible because they had received a ballot in the mail.
The department has acknowledged that some people on its list may have since become naturalized citizens, and said it expects to send Washington another list before Election Day, the Seattle Times reported, citing The Associated Press.
The state’s response
Mr. Hobbs’ office said it was reviewing the request. “At this time, we’re able to share that we are carefully reviewing the request and assessing the information sought to ensure that our response complies with applicable state and federal laws,” Helen Smith, a writer and editor on the Office of the Secretary of State’s communications team, said in an email to The Buffalo Chronicle on Tuesday. She said the office would follow up when it could share more.
The statement did not say whether the office has finished reviewing the list of about 400 registrants, whether it will take any action before the results are certified or whether it has responded to the Justice Department in writing.
The secretary was sharply critical.
“We take our responsibility to protect voter information seriously and will only respond to requests that follow due process. We saw what happened in California and don’t want Washingtonians to be harassed,” Mr. Hobbs said in a statement quoted by NBC News. “The timing of this request—one week before the General Election—is no doubt intended to cast unfounded suspicion on the results.”
His office questioned the quality of the federal data. “One of the approximately 400 records in the DOJ letter is from 1994,” the office said in a statement, according to KOMO. “Washington elections are secure. Cases of voter fraud, including noncitizen voting, are incredibly rare, and every voter attests to their eligibility by signing the declaration on their ballot return envelope in every election.”
Mr. Hobbs told KOMO that some people on the list are citizens, and he noted that federal law generally bars systematic removals from voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election. He told The Seattle Times that federal subpoenas over the past several weeks had sought information on about 100 people, some of whom were citizens and some of whom weren’t registered in Washington at all.
A spokesperson for his office also pointed to a court defeat for the department, telling KIRO, “The DOJ lost their fight in court for Washington’s complete voter rolls last month.”
Mr. Hobbs also renewed his criticism of a U.S. Postal Service postmarking change. He said it led to the rejection of 20,000 ballots in the August primary for late postmarks. “At a time when thousands of Washington voters already face ballot rejections due to delayed postmarks, our focus should be on ensuring every eligible voter can exercise their right to vote, not creating additional uncertainty about their eligibility,” he said.
A Republican view
Washington State Republican Party Chair Jim Walsh said the federal findings point to a weakness in the state’s automatic voter registration system.
“The counting of the ballots is generally secure; what is not secure is the database of registered voters,” Mr. Walsh told KOMO. “We count on our databases to be secure and clean here because it’s a mailing list and we send a ballot out to anyone on the list. We need to do a better job of cleaning that list up.”
California precedent
The Washington request follows a similar demand in California. Last week the department said it believed there were 20,000 noncitizens on California’s rolls and asked the state to sequester their ballots, NBC News reported. The administration then sued. On Monday an appeals court ruled against the administration, saying the Justice Department had not given the lower court a chance to review its claims.
Washington Attorney General Nick Brown led a 20-state friend-of-the-court brief opposing the California demand, the Seattle Times reported.
The flagged registrants are a small fraction of Washington’s more than 5 million registered voters. Whether the state sets any ballots aside, and whether a court is asked to order it, may be decided before counting ends.
Asked for comment, the White House press office referred questions to the Justice Department. The Justice Department had not responded to a request for comment.
Updated October 27, 2026: This story was updated to include comment from the Washington Secretary of State’s office.
Updated October 27, 2026: This story was updated to include a response from the White House.
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